Part one concentrated on making infusions, fruit liqueurs & vinegars as well as a crash on how to ferment veg, in Part two we are concentrating on easy ideas for extending the shelf life of your fruit & veg without too much fuss. These are all methods of using up excess fruit & veg to avoid food waste, we’ve listed them depending on how long you can expect them to keep for.

One Week plus-

Veggies Fridge Pickles – onion, celery, carrot (basically anything with a bit of crisp left in it) in cider or wine vinegar with a bit of garlic or fresh chilli. If you want to add dry spices heat vinegar gently with spices first and let cool before you put it on veg. Then pop it in the fridge. These will last a few weeks.

Yoghurt
Labneh (Strained Yoghurt) with spices or dukkah in olive oil, simply leave yoghurt in the fridge to strain through a sterilised cheesecloth, the result is a yoghurt ‘cheese’ known as Labneh, because it contains less liquid than a traditional yoghurt it will keep for longer. You can flavour it with herbs & spices, use it as a soft cheese, as a dip, in salads & in recipes.

Ferments
Veg that is coming to the end of it’s useability can be fermented, see Part One of our Lazy Foodies guide for a how to guide, try these tasty flavour pairings;Cauliflower, Red Onion & Cumin, Carrot & Nigella Seed, Kimchi

Fridge Jams
1½ to 2 parts sugar to 5 parts fruit plus spices. Think about which sugar and spices you use with which fruit. We prefer to use natural sugars when we can. You can also add flavours at the end for instance, balsamic & pepper to strawberries and use as part of salad dressing or drizzle on a goats cheese salad.

Fruit Syrups
Super easy, a little water, some sugar, Elderflowers, Raspberry, Gooseberry, use them as cordials, over ice cream, or turn into sorbets or granita in the freezer.

Six Months plus-

The longest shelf life of all comes with using alcohol to make liqueurs – Raspberry, Plum, Peach, Strawberry & vinegars – Raspberry, Damson, Elderflower to make amazing salad dressings. Steeping whole fruit in Alcohol, like Figs & Cherries and using in grown up Eton Mess & over ice cream is always a winner & makes great Christmas presents too.

Good luck & be sure to tag us into your experiments on social media, we love seeing what you’re up to!